Blood of Angels

by Marshall, Michael

  Brad nodded even though Karen wouldn't hear it. Pete was indeed dead. In a way the fact this had become public knowledge made it a little easier. It had changed from being a murky thing which had to be hidden at all costs, obfuscated in the hope the fact would simply fade away, to something irrevocably sharper and clearer. The known now accurately represented reality: the facts were in place. The job became making sure those facts didn't fall down and squash you flat.

  Lee had called after the cops interviewed him and told Brad what he'd said. Brad had passed on Steve's enquiry about the week's pickup and Lee said he didn't know. Hernandez was still not returning calls. It didn't seem like a good notion on the whole but they'd see. Brad was relieved to hear this, as privately he thought it would be a fucking terrible idea to deal drugs right now. 'You still there?'

  'Yes,' he said. 'Just, you know, thinking.'

  'Yeah.' She was quiet for a while, and Brad thought she was maybe gearing up to sign off. But then she spoke again.

  'Can I ask you something?'

  'Sure.'

  'You don't know anything about this, do you?'

  Brad opened his mouth but nothing came out. He coughed and then tried again. 'What do you mean?'

  'I mean, it's just, you and Pete and Lee were so tight, you know? I just wondered if Pete had some secret or something, something you guys knew about but weren't supposed to tell?'

  'No,' Brad said, relieved. 'Yeah, we were tight. We were like blood. Pete didn't have nothing weird going on that I knew about.'

  'Okay,' she said. For some reason the way she said it made him feel cautious again. Okay…what? Okay, thanks for the information? Okay, I believe you? Okay, I don't, actually—but I'm not going to call you on it right now?

  'It's just…' she said.

  'It's just what, babe?'

  'You know at the party, when you and Lee went to get burgers? I saw you out in front of the house before you left?'

  'My angel of fire. What about it?'

  'Well, I was thinking about that earlier and I thought when Lee came around the side to meet you there, didn't he say something like 'He's on his way', or 'On his way', or something?'

  Brad spoke very carefully. 'I don't remember it.'

  'I'm sure he did. Something like that. Because, also, I went to see Sara and Randy off, but you guys just kept standing there. Like you were waiting for someone.'

  'Nope,' Brad said. After a split second his brain provided. 'It was just, I was having a cigarette, remember? And Lee doesn't always like it in his car. I wanted to finish up before we left.'

  'Oh, okay,' she said.

  They talked of this and that for a little while, then just before the call ended, she said: 'Brad?'

  'Yeah?'

  'You think they'll get who did it?'

  'I don't know,' he said.

  'I do,' she said, quietly. 'I think they will.'

  •••

  After he'd called Brad, Lee had left his parents' house and drove around a while before finally heading back to his own place. He went inside and fixed coffee and sat drinking it at the spotless table in the kitchen. He resisted the urge to pull the car into the garage and search it for Pete's phone. He knew it wasn't there. He'd have seen it when he cleaned the car on the night of the shooting.

  But—assuming the cop hadn't been lying in an attempt to knock him off balance—it was kind of strange. Pete's phone was a fixture. He would have had it surgically implanted if he could. He must have had it with him that night. So where the hell was it?

  It didn't matter. Most likely it had fallen out of his pocket, somewhere between the parking lot where the shooting had taken place and the spot where they'd buried him. Humping him along in the dark, nobody would have noticed. Whatever. Even if somebody found the phone it made no difference. It didn't tie them to what had happened.

  But still.

  For a moment he sat with his head slumped forward. It could have not happened. It could all so easily have not happened, not be true.

  He took the call from Hernandez. He could have not done.

  He said 'yes'. He could have said 'no'.

  Small difference. Big difference.

  It could all have not happened.

  He remained sitting that way for ten minutes. Then he went out front, pulled the car into the garage, and searched it.

  There was no phone.

  He was washing up his hands in the kitchen when the doorbell rang. He assumed it was probably Brad come to freak out at him, but opened it to find a much older man standing outside.

  'Mr Reynolds,' he said, confused by the fact there was no car out in the road. 'What are you doing here?'

  The lawyer walked straight past him and into the house. 'I need you to tell me what you told them.'

  'Told who?'

  'The police, Lee. Who do you think?'

  'Why do you want to know?'

  'Because it's now my job to provide you with legal advice. Should it become necessary, which I hope it will not.'

  'Did my dad hire you?'

  'No he didn't.'

  'So who…'

  'Tell me, Lee. Every question, every answer. Every single thing.'

  Lee ran through the interview with the two detectives. Reynolds listened closely. By the time Lee finished he was looking serious.

  'You realize you're now an accessory to murder? You and Metzger would get serious jail time for that alone. You're not juveniles any more, hard though that can be to believe. If they tie this to the drugs and the DEA gets involved then you may as well throw away the key.'

  'But how would they do that?'

  'Why else were you in a deserted parking lot miles from anywhere in the dark? Why else would you hide the body?'

  'It was an accident, or something. We got scared.'

  'Uh-huh. And then you lied to a police officer. Bradley too. And are you confident there's not a single person who will testify that the two of you—with Peter Voss, of course—have been dealing all over the valley for the last six months?'

  Lee thought about all the people he slipped packages to. All the houses he'd visited, the parties he'd been welcome at, all the handshakes and free beers and 'Hey, dude, great to see you'—none of which would mean shit when the time came and people were confronted with a cop in their parents' living room and they realized dropping Lee's name would avoid them serious trouble.

  'This is all screwed up,' he said, quietly.

  'That about nails it,' Reynolds said. 'You need this thing to go away, and fast. You understand that, don't you? You get just how fucking serious this is?'

  Lee nodded. He felt tired. He felt nauseous. He'd get it together real soon, he knew, but just for the moment he felt like lying face-down down on the floor and never getting up. 'I get it.'

  'Come with me,' Reynolds said. He opened the front door.

  Hudek saw a car was now sitting in the road outside. It was black and had black windows too. The motor was running, but it was very, very quiet.

  He locked the house behind him and followed the lawyer up the pathway. At the car the older man opened the door. Lee bent down to see two sets of seats facing each other inside. The whole interior was black, and smelled like it was made of shadows.

  There was a man sitting in the middle of the seat which faced forward. It was the guy from the abandoned building. The guy he'd told the Plan to. The guy who, if he was honest, Lee could have lived without meeting again.

  'Hey, Lee John,' he said. 'Come take a seat. We need to talk.'

  Lee hesitated but knew there was nowhere else to go. He got in the car, sitting opposite. Mr Reynolds came and sat beside Lee. The door shut with a soft, expensive dunk and the car floated gently away from the kerb as if being picked up by a soft breeze.

  'How you feeling, Lee?' the man said.

  'Okay,' Lee said.

  'That's good. Not spun out a little?'

  'Well, a fucking tad, yeah. I've been calling Hernandez for three fucking days. Why isn't he
returning my calls?'

  'Because he's dead, Lee.'

  Lee blinked, his anger flicked out like a light.

  'He died the same night as your friend. Went looking for the guys who did the job on you. Didn't make it out the other side. Luckily we did a better job of hiding his body than you did with Mr Voss—though what we haven't been able to do is tie down the whereabouts of Mr Voss's cell phone, which I gather the police are getting exercised about.'

  'Jesus,' Lee said. He didn't bother to ask how the man got his information. He evidently just had it. 'This is fucked up.'

  'It's serious, yes, but it can be accommodated. We have to look to the future, always. The loss of Hernandez leaves us with a position to fill—and it'll put you in great shape for your Spring Break master plan. The Plan, right? Long live the Plan. Assuming we sort out this little local difficulty. Which I believe we can, with your continued cooperation.'

  'That would be good,' Lee said. 'That would be…very good.'

  'All part of the service.' The man sat back in his seat and looked at Lee for long enough for it to become quite uncomfortable.

  'What?' Lee said. The man was wearing an open-necked shirt and Lee couldn't help noticing that he had something that could only be a scar from a bullet wound, high on his chest. And was that another scar, nickel-sized, a couple inches below the first?

  'You still don't remember meeting me before?'

  'No. I really don't.'

  'Well, we're going to be doing real business together now. So let's do the introductions properly this time.'

  He stuck out his hand for Hudek to shake. A copper bracelet hung from his wrist.

  'Good to know you, Lee. My name is Paul.'

  Chapter 17

  Jim had thought he could drive past without incident. It was so long ago, and it was something he had trained himself rigorously to believe had happened to someone else. But not long after he had been past the old place he realized he was driving more and more slowly, as if his battery was running down. He stopped a couple of times, parked up by the side of the road for a while. Then drove off again. Puttering around. Through the forest. Back into town. Tightening circles.

  Eventually he found himself trundling into the lot of the Renee's. He was hungry now, there was no doubt. He still hadn't eaten since leaving Key West. He got out of the van. As soon as he did so his stomach didn't feel empty any more. You could smell cooking oil wafting from the back of the building. Jim's guts wanted something, but not what they were going to sell in there.

  He stood with his hands in the pockets of his jacket for a moment, enjoying the cold air, hoping it might cut through the clouds settling in his head, growing thicker and more stormy by the hour. Ever since he'd picked up the van things seemed to have become complicated, and it had gotten a whole lot worse since Petersburg. He had begun to feel as if things were coming to a point. It had been a long time since it felt like that.

  What was that in his pocket?

  He pulled it out, frowned at it. It was a pack of cigarettes.

  For a moment this was so weird to him that he was afraid he'd somehow picked up someone else's coat. But he couldn't think where he might have done that, and a quick check in the other pockets reassured him it was his. So where had these come from?

  Jim had not smoked in a long time. Jim had never smoked, in fact. James had, all through his teens, yes, and during the time he had spent in other countries. In the army, everybody smoked. When he got back, too. Teachers' common rooms could fume it up with the best. And then—during that other period. But not since. He had stopped dead when he reached Key West, quitting the habit like losing a finger. You adapted, lived your life to a slightly different rhythm: the calm, measured way of a Jim Westlake. But at some point in the last forty-eight hours he'd acquired a pack of Marlboro Reds.

  He put the pack back in his pocket. He didn't want one. He didn't smoke. But he knew they were there.

  For a moment, suddenly, he felt tired and angry at himself. These stupid divisions, as if they dissipated blame. It wasn't me, it was the drink. Judge, my hormones made me do it. Ain't nobody in this head but us chickens, and chickens don't carry knives.

  He pushed himself away from the van and wandered around the block. He wasn't ready to get back in just yet.

  The cigarettes hadn't been the first difference. That morning he'd noticed there was a small saucepan in the bag down in the footwell of the passenger seat. He didn't recall buying that either. He knew it hadn't been in the van, because everything had been disposed of. Also it looked new, not like the battered one which was in the shoebox. Wasn't anything strange or magical about it: he'd obviously just bought it, in the same way people found themselves finishing off a bag of chips that they'd resealed and put back in the drawer, without even realising they'd walked back in the kitchen to find them. He guessed sometimes your hands just reached out and did things. Maybe if there was a real division, then this was it. Your soul and body, united by a common enemy. Your maleficent mind.

  He got rid of the new saucepan. He didn't need two.

  There was nothing to see around the block, and by the third quarter Jim was ready to get back to the van and go. He was strolling past the back of Renee's when he heard something. He stopped, turned.

  There was nothing to see except the scarred and shadowed back of a fast-food outlet, a concrete light-industrial oblong with padlocked doors and big metal containers for refuse, lacquered with the odour of things gone long-ago bad and hosed away. There was an eight-foot high chain fence which marked the boundary between the back of this business and the next, a place selling tyres. Alongside was a narrow alleyway, probably providing access to the rear of some key storage unit or other. Maybe where they grew the burger patties.

  That's where the noise had seemed to come from.

  Jim heard it again. Sounded like it could be a small animal or something, maybe, knocking itself against the lower part of the fence. Could be hurt.

  Jim cared for animals. He guessed he should go see.

  He crossed the sidewalk and a few feet of battered concrete and stepped into the alley. It was thirty feet long and ended in a shadowed wall that he couldn't see.

  Yes, there it was—something small, right down at the end. Banging against the side of the fence.

  He took a couple of paces towards it. Its movements were frenetic, as if it thought itself trapped—and yet surely all it had to do was turn this way and run out.

  Strange shape, too. Must be standing on its hind legs. It was maybe three and a half feet tall.

  Jim took a final step, bent down a little to get a better look.

  A blurred pale face turned towards him.

  It was a child. A child in a tiny dark overcoat, head bare, hair whipped around as it snapped back and forth and up and down. It/she was clinging onto the bottom of the chain fence with both hands, shaking it with all her might. Her face was blurred and pale and streaked with earth.

  The fence rattled in the wind, but she made no sound.

  Jim stumbled back out of the alley, across the concrete and back to the sidewalk. He stood there staring as he sucked in big lungfuls of air. The fence continued to twitter gently in the wind. Nothing else. Nothing else was there.

  He walked quickly around the last leg of the block until he was back within sight of the van. He pulled out the cigarettes and a disposable lighter he found in the other pocket and started smoking again, just like that.

  After the first few pulls it was like falling off a log, and it helped mask the smell of fat coming out of vents in the building, the oil in which the dead had been warmed to feed the dying. It was making him feel sick. Everything was making him feel sick. He felt old and wrong and yet full of strength, his hands cramping with power he did not know how to use.

  Chapter 18

  I wound up picking a place called Lucy's on Union Street in Owensville. It had as much character as an airport lounge but they let you smoke and it was either that or a Denny's
. It was only as I settled into a booth on the side looking out over the crossroads that I realized this was the place Gulicks and Kroeger had used on their dates, where they had been the night they went on to find Lawrence Widmar's body in the woods outside Thornton. I considered asking the barman if he remembered them, using Gulicks' famously red hair as a trigger, but it could only make him assume I was a cop—not a good move if you want to sit unobtrusively in a bar. Patrons don't like it. It's like having your mom in the corner. Your mom, with a gun. Nobody needs that. Unger called when he landed and I gave him directions. Then I waited a couple of hours, twiddling my thumbs and trying not to drink too much. After the night out in the barrens I felt tired and spacy and had the dry, relentless headache that comes from getting up too early and knowing it's a long time until you can sleep. I ate some aspirin which I bought from a late drugstore across the street, and periodically trooped to the restroom to splash water over my face, but the improvement was minimal and shortlived. In the end I zoned out, hoping my life wasn't now always going be like this: sitting in some bar, feeling tired and wondering if someone was on their way to kill me. I thought about the case Nina was trying to solve, but didn't reach any conclusions. I hoped Gulicks had done it. That way we could get ourselves out of all this sooner rather than later. It seemed a little convenient, red hair and two hops and a suspect in jail—but that's the way it goes sometimes. Eighty-five per cent of solved crimes are broken in the first forty-eight hours. Any longer than that and memories fade, people get things wrong, the world spins on to other dark deeds.

  About a quarter after nine a cab pulled over on the opposite corner. I watched as a man paid the driver and looked across at the bar. He was short and not built for speed, but it had to be him. Sure enough, he got out and started walking towards me.

  When he entered he casually looked around. I was the only person sitting by myself and taking no interest in either the game on the television or someone of the opposite sex. It wasn't a hard call. He did not pull out a weapon. Instead he came over and stood by the table, hands empty and by his sides.